By the conclusion of the first film, Murphy has more or less made his peace with being a cyborg policeman and leaving behind his previous identity as a man with a family. However, writers Frank Miller and Walon Green couldn’t leave that aspect of his identity alone, and so included a pointless scene in which Robocop has to tell his former wife that he’s not Alex Murphy, just a replica of the slain police officer. Thanks to the skill of the actors, this scene is far from the worst in ROBOCOP 2.
In the first film the civil government of Detroit is barely seen, but the second harps on the fact that the government is so incompetent that it’s due to be bought out by OCP. The script never establishes why the corporation wants the hassle of managing a city, aside from “It’s the Kind of Thing Evil People Do.” The CEO of OCP, again played by Daniel O’Herlihy, is more of an outright villain here, and this time he’s more directly involved in the quest for the completely controllable cyborg cop, giving psychologist Doctor Faxx (Belinda Bauer) complete authority over the project. This is a textbook example of a villain acting stupidly to benefit the plot. Faxx gets the brilliant idea to turn a career criminal—Cain, a drug kingpin captured by Robocop—into a justice-machine, trying to use the kingpin’s own drug-addiction in order to manipulate him as a robotoid creation. Other secondary villains—the buffoonish mayor of Detroit, a twelve-year-old drug dealer named Hob—are just as artificial in their evil and just as bereft of charisma. Aside from a decent climactic battle between Robocop and Cyborg-Cain, ROBOCOP 2 is almost a total loss.
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